The AstroBin Equipment Moderator Handbook.

Basic principles

The AstroBin equipment database is a highly collaborative project similar to Wikipedia. The goal is to allow the community to build a database that is as detailed as they collectively desire.

For this reason, everyone on AstroBin can make and review edit proposals. Edit proposals that change technical properties, the image, or the website, are harmless: in case a mistake is proposed and approved, somebody else can just fix it with a new edit proposal.

However, creating new items or renaming existing one with an edit proposal has the potential for harm, because it can lead to fragmentation in the database (in other words, creating “islands of data”). Fixing that is much more expensive and difficult, therefore new items and edit proposals that affect an item's name can only be approved by a moderator.

For more information about the new equipment database, please see this page, and for an explanation of why the migration process was necessary, please see this blog post.

Risks of approving an item

When a new equipment item on AstroBin is unapproved, that item is unavailable to anyone except the user who created it. This means that if the item has issues (incorrect brand, typos in the name, incorrect technical features, ambiguity…) there is no harm done except the incorrect data on the technical cards underneath the images of the user who created the incorrect item.

There are three reasons why there is no harm:

  1. The user themselves chose to input that data so they can't be mad at AstroBin.

  2. Nobody else can pick that item to add to their own images, while it's unapproved.

  3. The problems can be fixed with edit proposals, and everything will be right eventually.

However, when you approve a new item, you make it available to everyone on AstroBin to add to their images, so you have to be especially careful with ambiguity.

Why ambiguity is dangerous

An item is considered ambiguous when it could potentially refer to more than one product. It's very important that all equipment items on AstroBin refer to exactly one product and one only.

Consider the following scenario:

  • A filter named Astrodon Luminance is added to the database

  • 10 people who own the 2” version add it to their images (1000 images)

  • 10 people who own the 36 mm version add it to their images (1000 again)

  • Somebody decides that they want to specify exactly what they own, so create a new item called Astrodon Luminance 36 mm and add it to their images (100)

  • 10 completely different people who own the 36 mm version, add the Astrodon Luminance 36 mm to their images (1000 again)

At this point, we have 1000 images tagged with Astrodon Luminance that really use a 2” version, and 1000 also tagged with Astrodon Luminance that really use a 36 mm version. Plus another 1100 images correctly tagged with the better specified version Astrodon Luminance 36 mm.

Now, here lies the problem:

We cannot rename the Astrodon Luminance entry, because half of the people will have the 36 mm version, and half will have the 2” version, but we don't know which is which. We would have to ask each one of them, so we're stuck with this generic version.

If you have read the blog post about the data migration, this will sound like a familiar situation!

So, please make sure that an item name is unambiguous before approving!

Freezing ambiguous items

An ambiguous item that has already been taken into use by the community is to be considered a lost cause. The best we can do is prevent further damage to occur, and we do this by using the Freeze button.

Freezing an item leaves it associated with the images it's associated with, but prevents users from seeing it and using it for further images, thus containing the damage.

The Unfreeze button is available simply to undo the freezing in case of mistake. It's unlikely that an item need to be unfrozen, for the following reasons:

  • If we're still on time to disambiguate the item (i.e. it has one user only) it's better to not approve it (or un-approve it) and disambiguate it with the input from the item's creator.

  • If it's too late to disambiguate it, then it's ambiguous forever and it should be frozen

When to go off the “official product name”

In the equipment create and edit forms, AstroBin recommends to use the “Official, complete product name”. Sometimes we have to make exceptions:

  1. If the official name is not “search friendly” we might want to add a few more words (e.g. focal reducer if the item's official name is something like FR123.

  2. If the official name can be found in various minor differences all over the internet (or even on the manufacturer's page), we pick a name that is consistent with other items from the same brand on the AstroBin database.

  3. If the official name is not future-proof, we will disambiguate it pre-emptily. The company could sell only one filter, called CoolBrand Light-Pollution Fighter, and this filter is only available in 50 mm. Even if the official name doesn't include the 50 mm words, and it's unambiguous enough because it's literally the only product by that company, we will add 50 mm to the name because maybe in the future the company will make a 36 mm version too.

  4. If the company's naming structure is not alphabetical-order-friendly, we will override their naming convention. We always want similar items to be next to each other in alphabetical order, so:

    1. this is good:

      • CoolBrand ED80 80/400 Apo

      • CoolBrand ED90 90/500 Apo

    2. this is bad:

      1. CoolBrand ED80 80/400 Apo

      2. CoolBrand Apo ED90 90/500 (even if these really are the official names, we don't care)

Typical rejection scenarios

 

Duplicate

Scenario: Sometimes people will ignore suggestions and create an item that is the same as another, with its name spelled slightly differently.

Resolution: Reject the item as a duplicate (“This item already exists in the database”) and select the correct item. AstroBin will automatically fix the images tagged with the duplicate item.

The correct item might be in a different category. This happens often when people create OAGs as Telescopes, while they belong to Accessories, or, viceversa, guiding cameras or finder scopes as Accessories, while they belong, respectively, to Cameras and Telescopes.

Too generic

Scenario: The item being created is not specific enough, and we risk that people with different equipment items all tag their images with this one, because it's close enough. Then we can never split it into the more specific names, because we would have to ask everybody what they have exactly. Sounds familiar? 😄

Resolution: Use the comments section to discuss this item with the user who created it. Then either make an edit proposal to correct the name to be more specific, or reject is a duplicate.

Wrong brand

Scenario: The item being created has the wrong brand, or the brand has typos, incorrect capitalization, etc.

Resolution: AstroBin doesn't have an edit proposal workflow for brands, so please do the following:

  1. Create this item anew, using the correct brand, or creating this brand again with the correct name.

  2. Once approved, reject this item as a duplicate of the one you created.

Other common mistakes

  • Filter sets: filters should be added individually, not as a set, so that they may be added to acquisition details properly. Filter sets need to be rejected.

  • Nikon vs Nikkor: please make sure that the lens being created as a Nikon doesn't already exist as a Nikkor.

  • Canon vs CentralDS: CentralDS is its own brand on AstroBin, so their cameras shouldn't be created under the Canon brand.

⛔️ What happens when an item is rejected?

When an item is rejected as a duplicate, AstroBin fixes the equipment tags on the affected images. Since an item pending review can only have images by the user who created the item, only one person is affected.

When an item is rejected for another reason, it's removed from images.

In all cases, the user is notified.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL when rejecting items that are assigned to lots of images without marking as duplicate. You ALMOST NEVER want to reject in a way that the item is deleted, but you need to work with the item's creator to figure out how to rename the item.

✅ What happens when an item is approved?

While an item is pending approval, it's invisible to everyone on AstroBin except the moderators and the user who created it.

This is because they might create the item during the image upload process, so they need to associate it to their image right away.

When an item is approved, it becomes available to everyone else on AstroBin to add to their images.

Notes about the migration tool

As a moderator, when you use the migration tool, you act in a global context instead of a personal one. That means that migrations that you create will affect all users on AstroBin who have used the legacy item you are migrating.

Practically, when you create a migration as a moderator, AstroBin will create migrations for all affected users, this way they get notified and they have the power to undo the migration on their migration tool page.

You don't need to worry about triaging the work to avoid stepping on each others’ feet: AstroBin takes care of avoiding conflicts by locking resources. You may still want to split the work by brand, to avoid unnecessary trips to items that have already been taken care of.

The “reverse migration” workflow

Every AstroBin equipment item in the Explorer has a button only available to moderators: Migrate into…

When you click it, AstroBin will look for all un-migrated legacy items similar to this one, and offer you to migrate them.

Please select the correct one, and be careful of the following cases:

  • AstroBin judges similarity using a string distance algorithm, so “Cool Brand MyScope 8” will be very similar to “Cool Brand MyScope 9”, even tho they are two totally different products. Read the names carefully.

  • Be mindful of multiple legacy items in one entry: you don't want to migrate those, we'll leave them for later, when I build some code to do the splitting workflow.

  • Do not, under any circumstances, throw away data that the user had. Do not migrate a more specific item into a less specific one. For instance, if you are migrating into the Optolong L-eNhance (without any filter size being specified), and AstroBin proposes an Optolong L-eNhance 2”, do not migrate it. Rather find (or create) the L-eNhance 2” as a variant of the generic L-eNhance, and then migrate into that one.

  • As an exception to the rule above, AstroBin doesn't track any modifications except DSLR/mirrorless cameras. So mounts marked as “belt modification” or similar can be migrated into the stock mount in the new database.

  • This job makes your eyes tired fast, and you quickly start clicking too fast. Don't do too many in one session. 😀

PS: once you've clicked the first checkbox, it's easier to go forward hitting TAB for the next checkbox, and SPACEBAR to check it. 😉

PPS: for popular items, you might need more than one trip to the Migrate into… button. Keep going until there are no more correct suggestions.

 

Notes about the “Variant of” field

Some equipment items need to be “connected” in order to group search results.

For instance, if I'm looking for images taken with an Optolong L-eXtreme filter, I probably don't care about the size of the filter, to figure out how well it works.

This means that I'm reaching a search page after clicking on the 1.25” variant of that filter, AstroBin will, by default, offer search results taken with all variants of that filter.

This is what the concept of “variant” mean, but how do you use it?

  1. Always make a generic version of an item be the base variant (therefore don't make ZWO Green be a variant of ZWO Green 2”, but do the reverse and remember to freeze the base variant if it's ambiguous by design)

  2. Base variants cannot be variants of something else, hierarchies are not supported and AstroBin won't let you do this.

  3. Circular variant relationships are also not allowed.

  4. When you encounter an item that has several versions, but not a generic one that could be used as a generic one, please do create it and freeze it.

What else can you do as a moderator?

the AstroBin Equipment Database has been built to be highly collaborative, with a (very) long-term vision about maintainability.

Please consider performing the following tasks:

  • Take part in discussions about unapproved equipment items started by other moderators.

  • Browse the database and make edit proposals to improve the naming conventions. In particular, you want to make sure that the list makes sense when viewed in alphabetical order (so “Cool Brand 123 mount Pro” should be renamed to “Cool Brand 123 Pro mount”, in order to be alphabetically right after “Cool brand 123 mount”.

  • At your discretion, feel free to polish and improve the database when time allows (technical details, photos, “variant of”, community notes…

Thank you!

Salvatore